About the colloquium

Leading international scholars working on broad themes related to global land grabbing, and who have recently guest edited journal special issues or authored key articles on this subject will be present at the Colloquium.

These include:

Melissa Leach,

James Fairhead,

Ian Scoones,

Philip McMichael,

Philippe le Billon,

Esteve Corbera,

Lyla Mehta,

Gert Jan Velwisch and

Wendy Wolford,

The tradition of our Colloquia is to contribute to constructing bridges between academic community, policy experts, and activist circles around knowledge production and dissemination.

Leading international public intellectuals working around these themes, including Indra Lubis of La Via Campesina (tbc), Sofia Monsalve (FIAN), Nora McKeon, and Sergio Sauer (Brazil) will be at the Colloquium.

Participants will also include several authors in the cited special issues below. It will continue the Colloquium tradition of being an exciting and productive space for encounter and exchange between academics, activists and policy experts.

More information and registration

Why this colloquium now?

2012 will be a big year for the study of global land grabbing.

After a few years dominated by important reports from NGOs and the media, as well as initial scoping studies from some academics, a big batch of academic studies that are empirically fresh and theoretically rigorous is finally coming out.

By June 2012, there will two journal special issues that will be available, namely, ‘Green grabbing: a new appropriation of nature’ (Journal of Peasant Studies), and ‘The new enclosures: critical perspectives on corporate land deals’ (Journal of Peasant Studies).

Around middle of the year, the journal Water Alternatives will release its special issue on ‘water grabbing’.

Feminist Economics will come out with a special issue on ‘gender implications of global land grabbing’.

Later in the year, the journal Globalizations will release a special issue on ‘land grabbing and global governance’.

Another special issue focusing on ‘the role of the State in land grabbing’ is currently under review in Development and Change, and if accepted may come out by October 2012.

Geopolitics is releasing a special issue on ‘Geopolitics of Global Food Security' with significant content on land grabbing.